Tag: rio cinema

Toronto Cinemas2 Comments

Death Wish IV at the Rio, 1987

Eric Veillette

Since that gang of upstarts at the Toronto Underground Cinema are showing Death Wish III as part of their Seven Deadly Sins Film Festival tonight, I thought I’d share one of my favourite photos from the Silent Toronto archives. The Rio, no stranger to this site (here and here), in late 1987, three or four years before it flickered out altogether, showing Death Wish IV, The Lost Boys, Robocop and No Man’s Land. Admission, $4. Oh, Yonge St., where art thou? Continue reading Death Wish IV at the Rio, 1987

Toronto Cinemas13 Comments

The Yonge Street Strip

Eric Veillette

In the late 1970s, you could venture down a five block strip of Toronto’s Yonge St. — from Gerrard to Queen — and find several cinemas offering the kind of trashy celluloid fare you could only dream of seeing in a theatre nowadays. By Eric Veillette Today, the city’s flagship street and main tourist destination is oddly devoid of street-front cinemas. On Dundas, across the street from the former Downtown Theatre is this massive crypt of a multiplex known as the AMC, but it barely holds a candle to the cinematic landscape one could find a few decades ago. Starting … Continue reading The Yonge Street Strip